Pond Boss Forums POND CONSTRUCTION Soil questions Compacting Under Pipe - Quick Advice?

OK... The sediment pond dams are finished except for pipes through them. On two, I'm just going with spillways. On three, I'd prefer pipes mainly to help ensure against / delay the possibility of other fish contaminating them - thinking that it would be harder for them to swim vertically up flow into pipe than up flow in spillway.

Two already have water and other fish in them - we didn't get them totally empty. Three are just dust at present. Of those three, I'd like to stock the smallest with just rosey red fatheads, one with fatheads and smallmouth, and one with fatheads and hybrid striped bass so I'd really like to keep other fish out.

On ebay, I noticed a Sullair Air Jackhammer. Is that similar enough to a Sullair Backfill Tamper MBT-6 that it could be used for that?

A building supply store has a gas powered plate compactor / jumping jack in stock that they would rent. $72 for the weekend. It has an 8 x 10 or 12" plate on bottom. The guy mentioned it was all one person wanted to handle.

I noticed JBL preferred the above backfill tamper. Purchasing that backfill tamper at $600 isn't out of line - especially if I knew I could get most of that back by reselling when done; but...

The ebay item auction ends tomorrow morning. I'm hoping to do the dams this weekend. Any advice?

Hey Ranger!
The best advise I can give would be to contact Mike Otto & ask him.
e-mail pondboss@texoma.net
phone: 800-882-DIRT

Ranger you can rent those backfill tampers from larger rental stores for about $30 a day.

JBL:

None of the stores any place close have the backfill tampers - only one has a jumping jack. I'm pretty rural I guess... One of my nephews is coming home this weekend from Champaign which is a bigger area and may be able to find/rent something there.

I'm showing my ignorance here; but generally speaking what type of air compressor do you use on that? I just got off the phone with that company (at the link) and someone there indicated they were guessing, but probably a trailor type compressor (I.e. big rascal) would be required. The only gas powered air compressor I have is probably 8 hp or so...

Thanks!
Jeff

We rented a 20" gas-powered vibrating compacter to tamp the fill (under an upcoming concrete floor) in a new barn last month. Got it for $64 total for a weekend. It's noisy but doesn't beat you up, and is basically self-propelled (once pointing the direction you want). And the resulting compacted sub-floor is darn hard, as I can testify after digging into it to put in drain boxes and lines.

Ranger you will need atleast a 145cfm at 80 psi air compressor for the tamper. I am kind of like you in rural sense. the closer rental dealer here is 30 miles away. They rent a 185cfm air compressor for $85 for 24 hours and the backfill tamper is about $30
The reason I like the air backfill tamper better than the jumping jack,is that you can really work the material under the pipe. Since you have limited access to equipment I would use whatever you can find. Anything will be better than nothing. Goodluck.

We completed 3 of them this weekend. I will now freely acknowledge that I am no longer 22, in great shape, and bulletproof. I've got blisters and even the thought of sitting up makes me groan; but we learned a lot and got some stuff I wanted done. I will probably rent the jumping jack and laser level again next weekend to put a pipe through the main dam (permanent siphon).

Additions:
One of my nephews did find one place in Champaign with a backfill tamper. Another of my nephews had a new air compressor which would have been large enough to power it; but the air compressor is rather large and top heavy so we didn't go that route.

The jumping jack seemed to pack pretty well (as evidenced when we tried to adjust one of the antiseep collars and found we couldn't budge it). I quickly learned to make sure the area we wanted to pack was as flat and level as possible prior to packing. That jumping jack isn't bad on level; but it is a little wicked going up or down.

Didn't know I could rent a laser level until walked into the rental place for the jumping jack. Local conservation office had one, but wouldn't rent. They would shoot for a person, but short on mutually available time. Wished had rented it prior to doing the dams... Oh well.

Used the Scheib Drainage collars. They seemed to work pretty well. Cracked one of the weld areas with the jumping jack, but it was the back one and think it will be ok. Applied lots of tar to the antiseep collar areas on all of them. Learned something about that. Get one of those long rubber gloves to use to put the tar on (just put on semi-loose fitting glove and grab handfuls of tar and spread). Also learned that GoJo cleaner works pretty well on tar if you just use the short disposable gloves and coat your arm above the glove.

Trackhoe worked better for cutting area through dam than the backhoe. Backhoe worked better for digging out the anti-seep collar areas. We learned to dig out an area wide enough for jumping jack to go around the ends - didn't take long to realize lot easier with backhoe than tile spade.

A nephew with construction experience helped greatly with the projects. He is a wizard with equipment and was a huge help.

Game plan now is for rain, then order rosey red fathead minnows, a feeder, and HSB. There are some other stuff I'd like to do before we get too much rain; but busy week ahead and rain forecast. We need rain badly so ok with however turns out.

Update: The pipe through the main dam went well and may well be tested this weekend (see siphon thread). In hindsight, we made a few (maybe a bunch of) mistakes.

We should have made sure the pipe flowing out of the sediment dams extended beyond the base of the dam. Water flowing out of the pipe quickly erodes the dam below. I don't think that will cause problems as we added on in the mud to the one with worst problem; but should have done while doing it.

We should have used a laser level and shot all elevations before installing them.

We still need to paint the exposed PVC. I should have done that at the time.

I should have insisted on pipes through all the dams. I gave in and went with a primary spillway on the main one feeding into the lake. This was a mistake on numerous fronts. Despite it being on virgin Clay, it is eroding so we will have to redo this summer anyway. Also, I wanted to use the dams as a roadway around the lake during all but really muddy periods. The primary spillway prevents this. Not doing the pipes initially will mean we'll have to level and reseed again.

Lesson: Read on here and learn all you can learn from other's experiences so you are not out the expense and time of doing it over or stuck with something not as good.